In modern day agriculture, there are many field related activities that occur which are affected by the prevailing weather conditions. As the methods for precision agriculture have advanced, it now is possible to collect and record various pieces of information such as weather data. Prevailing weather conditions during certain key operations can affect the quantity and/or quality of the operation or the harvested crop. This information can also be quite useful later on when analyzing the results from a harvested crop. Quite often there are areas within a field where lower crop quality or yields occur. Recording the weather data allows the producer to use this information to determine if the reason for a low yield in a certain area was caused by prevailing weather conditions during a key operation.
It is also quite common for agriculture producers to record weather information related to applications of inputs for documentation purposes. Quite often this is mandated by certain governmental bodies at the federal, state, and county level due to regulations, restrictions, or in order to qualify for various government programs. This is especially prevalent when it comes to the application of fertilizers, herbicides and pesticides. One current method used for recording weather data, requires the operator to use stationery type weather equipment for recording information such as humidity, temperature, wind direction, wind speed, etc. and then recording it in a log book. This method can have many drawbacks. Some of the drawbacks are that the operator forgets to record the information, the information changes over the course of time as the inputs are being applied, or the weather conditions are different in various parts of the field.
Although some teaching is known which includes more current weather information, these applications do not concern themselves with making adjustments in real time to optimize an agricultural input or machine operation. These are primarily concerned with what can be done with logged data or optimization of the amount or application of crop inputs overall without consideration of real time variations in conditions which lead to crop yield variations within a field.
What is needed in the art is a method and apparatus for optimization of an agricultural application operation using weather, product and/or environmental information, particularly which includes a mobile weather station which is directly connected to the equipment which is performing the agricultural application operation, and which data is used in real time to adjust parameters or inputs of the agricultural application or machine operation.